The Boys Love (BL) genre has been around for many years now, but recently the genre has seen an epic boom with a lot of series and movies coming out for audiences to enjoy.
And while arguably, Thailand has produced many and some of the best BL series available for consumption, Taiwan has also released quality web series of the same genre.
One notable one is the anthology HIStory. HIStory is a web drama anthology series composed of different mini-series inside one season. First aired in 2017, HIStory now has four seasons, with the fourth one still ongoing.
If BL is your jam and you're excited to try watching some more, here are some of the mini-series that HIStory has produced, categorized according to your mood.
Fluffy and Domestic
If you're looking for a mini-series that oozes some fluffy and family-centric vibes, HIStory 2: Right or Wrong is the one for you. While its plot is the usual student-falls-in-love-with-his-teacher trope, the presence of the teacher's six-year-old kid and the domesticity of the relationship gives this mini-series plus points and an overall fluffy mood.
The series, of course, has a conflict, but (some spoiler alert!) it's honestly refreshing to watch a BL series whose conflict is not related to cheating but is a problem that real-life couples encounter.
Sporty and Young
HIStory 2 presented us with two of the best mini-series of the anthology Right or Wrong and the entry for the sporty and young mood: Crossing the Line. Before the release of the third season of HIStory (or perhaps even after), Crossing the Line was considered the best mini-series in the anthology.
Crossing the Line's story revolves around volleyball player Xia Yu Hao who gradually fell in love with his team manager Qui Zi Xuan. Apart from the romantic-excitement-inducing scenes that this series has, the best part of this is the good character development that each of the characters had and, of course, the thrill of competitiveness that volleyball can invoke.
That and the chemistry of the actors who portrayed these roles were out of this world.
Angsty and Bittersweet
Don't be fooled by those two, erm, negative words above because HIStory 3: Trapped remains one of the superior HIStory mini-series. Trapped is the definition of opposites attract: one is a police officer, and one is a mafia boss.
Shao Fei is a police officer investigating Tang Yi, the mafia boss for years, and one terrifying circumstance brought the two together to see each other in a new light. What follows this is a chase enough to make the audience pull their hair out of frustration and a romantic progression that makes everyone else jealous of how mature these two can be despite being opposites.
Sad and Mad
Yes, you read that right. HIStory 3: Make Our Days Count was successful in two things: giving avid fans of HIStory another BL masterpiece and making the same fans cry their hearts out. The amount of time people cried because of this is uncountable.
It's another opposites-attract trope, yes, but the clichéness of the nerd-falling-in-love-with-the-popular-kid-and-vice-versa story, combined with the way the characters broke down each others wall, and tell their own stories make this BL series a quality one. Just beware of the ending. It has a reputation for making audiences mad.